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MegaUpload Service Campaign
Megaupload was founded on March 21, 2005 in Hong Kong, however, the company did not use the city as its base of operations. The Megaupload Service Campaign technically lasted from 2009 to July 2011, in terms of significant confrontations during the stage of the conflict known as The Gathering Storm. After that, all was quiet on the western front until after ACTA was signed, then, with the World Wide Web rising in a tide of protest over attempts to ratify ACTA into domestic laws, MegaUpload became the perfect example to make to silence the crowds, in the Battle of MegaUpload. However, contrary to Dictator expectations, that confrontation, one of the first alerts to the world that the stage of the conflict known as Blitzkrieg had begun, only led to greater resistance from the Peoples of the Free World, and led direction to the creation of the Resistance. This Wiki's Opinion On Megaupload Megaupload may have had some legitimate uses, and the files should have been available to the users who uploaded them to download again just in case after the closure, but overall, it was a major pirating site. It even had a comprehensive procedure to identify child pornography, but no policy to remove such content or alert elgal authorities. In the Wiki's opinion, Megaupload needed a harsh warning and a good squeeze to tidy up its act, in addition to regulations against piracy of still-in-publication materials, but that should have been sufficient to address the main grievances. It would also have addressed the world's concerns of out-of-print materials disappearing down Orwellian memory holes in cyberspace. First Battle of China The Megaupload Service Campaign began in 2009, when, facing Chinese law enforcement investigation to the company, the website was forced to pre-emptively block Mainland Chinese IP addresses, including Hong Kong IPs, except for purchased premium accounts. These measures were taken to prevent total blacklisting or shutdown of the company by Chinese government forces. This is believed to be due to the Chinese Government being wary of a website that could share so much information so quickly between possible anti-governmental groups. This may also be due to the Chinese government's historical and still-enforced anti-pornography policies that often culminate in raids and shutdowns of websites and stores, which would apply with Megaporn (later named Cum.com) and thus make the company blacklisted in China. First Battle of Arabia As of May 23, 2010, access to Megaupload was periodically blocked by the Saudi Arabian regulatory "Communications and Information Technology Commission". Service was also intermittently blocked in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the availability of pornographic content on the website and its affiliate websites, the 5 of them run by the same company. Apparently, the Arabian Peninsula governments felt they had the right to decide for their citizens what the citizens wanted to see. There is no way of "stumbling" into downloading porn, you have to move the cursor over the damned link and CLICK! Apparently, both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates believed their citizens were not smart enough to choose whether or not to click on a link that is fairly clear and obvious as to the content behind said link. It is not possible to protect people from all the "bad choices" they could make, and it's about time these governments figured that one out... First Battle of Malaysia The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission ordered all Individual Service Providers in Malaysia to block Megaupload and Megavideo in addition to other such sites. Some fo the ISPs supposedly blocked all the sites on the government's list, while most ISPs simply throttled connection speeds. These measures taken by the government may well be due to legitimate concerns over the sharing of files used by criminal or terrorist organizations, such as bomb or toxin manufacturing instructions. However, there is no evidence either way and no government statements, hence this is purely speculation, the Malaysians may also have been trying to fight copyright to increase their international standing. This postulate is because most of the major powers have declared policies against piracy, and the final draft of ACTA had been announced secretly by that point. If Malaysia was in the know, it would want to please the big powers by making at least a symbolic move to fight copyright violations. First Battle of India Reliance Entertianment obtained a court order blocking Megaupload, Megavideo, MediaFire, RapidShare, and a number of other file hosting websites. It cited copies of its 2011 film Singham on file hosting sites. Apparently, they have not learned that to get something done right, including protecting oneself, one must do it by oneself instead of asking courts. They have also yet to appreciate the fact that if somethign is wildly popular for pirates, then it is very good. People don't pirate bad media, it doesn't get many downloads. Of course, in this case, Reliance was on the side of right, as the movie was just released and was still in publication, hence the piracy was simply money-dodging instead of with the purpose of maintaining a legacy and preventing an Orwellian memory hole from forming. We do however believe that blocking file hosting sites from India is a foolish move, as outsourcing of labour from the Americas often requires such sites so that the companies can continue operating and transferring files at full capacity.